Downturn cuts grass business severely

Wednesday

Oct 22, 2008 at 12:01 AM

Because of the housing industry downturn, Pacific Sod has decided the grass is greener - not in growing sod at its Patterson farm, but in converting to a variety of row crops, the company announced Tuesday.

Reed Fujii

Because of the housing industry downturn, Pacific Sod has decided the grass is greener - not in growing sod at its Patterson farm, but in converting to a variety of row crops, the company announced Tuesday.

Southern California-based Pacific Sod will continue to provide turf to Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley customers from another Northern California facility, while the Patterson farm goes to crops such as herbs, tomatoes, asparagus, spinach and alfalfa.

"We're still sod farming and going strong," said Jeffrey Barber, Pacific Sod assistant marketing director. "We've got a real good production facility in the in San Juan Bautista area."

Demand for sod has dropped along with a decline in new housing projects, although sales continue for commercial, industrial and institutional construction.

"Our business mainly follows new housing starts - and there are very few of them lately," Barber said.

Other sod producers are also feeling the slowdown.

"We've probably seen from our high in 2005, 2006, we're probably down 30 percent from those volumes," said Edward Zuckerman, chief executive of Delta Bluegrass Co. and Zuckerman Family Farms in the San Joaquin Delta west of Stockton.

Zuckerman's operation has long been a diversified operation, also producing potatoes, asparagus, grain corn and other commodities on about 7,000 acres in the Delta.

As turf sales have slipped, he said, "We've just shifted production from sod over to those other commodities."

A-G Sod Farms Inc., which has eight growing facilities in the West, including one in the Delta near Lodi, has simply cut back growing acreage, manager Greg Searle said.

"We just have less sales than we had years ago, so it's just a matter of sizing your farms properly," he said Tuesday.

"The unfortunate part of the business is that these housing crunches and everything else have affected us all."

Besides dealing with slower demand, high energy prices have pushed up operating costs for fuel, transportation and fertilizer, and labor costs have risen as well, Searle said.

San Joaquin County farm officials do not track sod sales separately, but they report it is part of a significant segment of nursery and landscape plants grown in the area.

In 2007, they reported sales of turf, bulbs, rhizomes, cactus, Christmas trees and more added up to an estimated $22 million.

Total farm sales countywide were more than $2 billion last year. The leading commodities were milk, with gross sales of $466 million, and winegrapes, at $217 million.